Safeway collaborates with pharmacy school on smoking-cessation

By Michael Johnsen

One of the ways retailers help consumers realize their full healthcare value is through the kind of outcome management Safeway pharmacists adopted earlier this year to help people quit smoking. Safeway pharmacists have received specialized training — developed by the University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy — that covers optimal smoking-cessation counseling techniques.

The program developed for Safeway uses a streamlined version of Rx for Change, a tobacco-cessation training program that UCSF pharmacy faculty created to train healthcare providers nationwide. This project fundamentally redesigns how pharmacists work with patients, from simply offering smoking-cessation medications behind a counter to active clinical involvement.

"Pharmacists are often the most accessible healthcare provider for patients within their own communities, but we haven't maximized their expertise in that setting," stated Joseph Guglielmo, Jr., interim dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy. "This project offers Safeway customers the full patient care skill set of pharmacists."